HYPOTHESIS AND THEORY
published: 15 March 2016
doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00343
How Do Theories of Cognition and
Consciousness in Ancient Indian
Thought Systems Relate to Current
Western Theorizing and Research?
Peter Sedlmeier 1* and Kunchapudi Srinivas 2
1
Institut für Psychologie, Technische Universität Chemnitz, Chemnitz, Germany, 2 Department of Philosophy, Pondicherry
University, Puducherry, India
Edited by:
Zoltan Dienes,
University of Sussex, UK
Reviewed by:
Michael Lifshitz,
McGill University, Canada
Vince Polito,
Macquarie University, Australia
*Correspondence:
Peter Sedlmeier
peter.sedlmeier@
psychologie.tu-chemnitz.de
Specialty section:
This article was submitted to
Consciousness Research,
a section of the journal
Frontiers in Psychology
Received: 14 August 2015
Accepted: 24 February 2016
Published: 15 March 2016
Citation:
Sedlmeier P and Srinivas K (2016)
How Do Theories of Cognition and
Consciousness in Ancient Indian
Thought Systems Relate to Current
Western Theorizing and Research?
Front. Psychol. 7:343.
doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00343
Frontiers in Psychology | www.frontiersin.org
Unknown to most Western psychologists, ancient Indian scriptures contain very rich,
empirically derived psychological theories that are, however, intertwined with religious
and philosophical content. This article represents our attempt to extract the psychological
theory of cognition and consciousness from a prominent ancient Indian thought system:
Samkhya-Yoga. We derive rather broad hypotheses from this approach that may
complement and extend Western mainstream theorizing. These hypotheses address an
ancient personality theory, the effects of practicing the applied part of Samkhya-Yoga
on normal and extraordinary cognition, as well as different ways of perceiving reality.
We summarize empirical evidence collected (mostly without reference to the Indian
thought system) in diverse fields of research that allows for making judgments about the
hypotheses, and suggest more specific hypotheses to be examined in future research.
We conclude that the existing evidence for the (broad) hypotheses is substantial but that
there are still considerable gaps in theory and research to be filled. Theories of cognition
contained in the ancient Indian systems have the potential to modify and complement
existing Western mainstream accounts of cognition. In particular, they might serve as a
basis for arriving at more comprehensive theories for several research areas that, so far,
lack strong theoretical grounding, such as meditation research or research on aspects
of consciousness.
Keywords: consciousness, Samkhya-Yoga, cognition, meditation research, extraordinary cognition
Almost unknown to Western academic psychologists, there is a huge collection of ancient
Indian thought systems that attempt to describe and explain human experience and behavior.
By thought systems we mean interpretations of the famous Vedas or reactions to these ancient
Indian scriptures that encompass psychology, religion, and philosophy. We will refer to these
hereafter simply as systems. Some applied parts of the respective writings are sometimes referred
to in Western therapeutic approaches that deal with meditation (e.g., Kabat-Zinn, 1996; Hayes
et al., 1999; Wallace and Shapiro, 2006; Walsh and Shapiro, 2006; Linehan, 2007). However, the
theories contained in the Indian systems were not developed to describe (psychological) clinical or
therapeutic processes—in fact, they did not include any clinical aspects at all (with the exception of
Ayurveda) although they propose methods to improve life and gain wisdom (e.g., Feuerstein, 2001).
These systems are basically theories that cover in principle all the main aspects of psychology, such
as cognition, behavior, personality, emotion, and volition. One reason why these systems have never
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Cognition in Ancient Indian Approaches
in “trial-and-error” experiments (Jayatilleke, 1963, p. 464). One
might argue that for the Hindu systems, the situation is different
because many holy texts are claimed to have been revealed and
carry with them the connotation of “truth” in an unquestionable
sense (see Klostermaier, 2006, p. 11). But here one could also
advance the argument that the psychological insights reported
in Hindu texts are very likely based on personal experiences—
at least, this is our working hypothesis. Support for this empirical
and investigative view comes from contemporary scholars (e.g.,
Phillips, 2009, p. 39) and leading Hindu figures of the recent past.
For instance, Swami Vivekananda was of the opinion that “if a
religion is destroyed by such investigations, it was then all the
time useless, unworthy superstition; and the sooner it goes the
better” (Swami Jitatmananda, 2004, p. 171). And Sri Aurobindo
who kept an elaborate diary on the effects of his yoga practice over
many years (Sri Aurobindo, 2001) came to the conclusion that
yoga, the applied part of Hindu theory, “is nothing but practical
psychology” (Sri Aurobindo, 1996, p. 39). Although the original
evidence is more akin to qualitative data gathered in singlecase designs in contemporary psychology, also sometimes termed
phenomenological evidence (e.g., Pekala, 1987), it is, in our view
nonetheless as empirical as can be (see also Gallagher and Zahavi,
2013). One might, of course, still question the sources of the
respective theories but even for Western mainstream theories
it is often not clear how they originated. Anyway, the scientific
method (e.g., Bunge and Ardila, 1987) is concerned not so much
with the way theories are “found” but with how they can be
tested, which makes them acceptable for science or not. If the
scientific method can be applied to a theory (see Sedlmeier,
2014, for arguments why this is the case for Indian psychology),
and if that theory is wrong, it will eventually be found out.
So to summarize our conclusion for the first potentially critical
issue, what will be compared in this article is (ancient Indian)
psychology with (contemporary Western) psychology, and not
religion (or philosophy) on the one hand with psychology on the
other.
The second potentially problematic issue arises from the way
ancient Indian psychology is presented. Because it is embedded in
a religious or philosophical context, and, of course, because it was
compiled a long time ago, the language and arguments used are
not familiar to present-day psychologists. An additional problem
arises because the original texts were written in ancient languages
such as Sanskrit and Pali, and translations are often ambiguous;
that is, different scholars may translate (and interpret) the same
expressions differently. So what scholars who deal with these
systems (mostly philosophers and philologists by profession)
usually do is to add the original terms when they use the
English translations. We will also do this occasionally for very
central terms but to minimize the negative impact on the
readability of the paper, we will use mostly English translations
and provide a glossary of the corresponding Sanskrit terms
(without the potentially confusing diacritical marks) in the
Supplementary Material. Please note that we will not attempt
to do yet another of the already innumerable exegeses of the
original texts, and we also do not strive for a comprehensive
coverage of all the diverging interpretations of these texts. What
we want to convey, however, are all aspects that are central
made it into Western textbooks might be that they are not purely
psychological: They also contain elements of religion associated
with Buddhist and Hindu practice (e.g., mentioning of personal
gods) and of philosophy.
In this article we will try to lay out the psychological parts
of two prominent Hindu systems, Samkhya and Yoga, usually
treated as a single system. We put our focus on what this system
has to say about cognition (including consciousness). It will be
seen, however, that cognition cannot be fully isolated from the
other aspects of human experience and behavior, as has usually
been attempted in mainstream Western psychology. Moreover, it
will become clear that Indian systems of thought contain applied
parts that give directions for how to lead a fulfilled life, an
aspect that has only recently found increased interest in Western
psychology.
We are, of course, not the first ones attempting to connect
Eastern and Western theoretical views. Several authors have
already introduced Buddhist approaches as a theoretical basis
for research on meditation. For instance, Lutz et al. (2007)
describe in detail a Tibetan Buddhist approach to meditation,
and Grabovac et al. (2011) explain a more recent Burmese
Theravada Buddhist theoretical approach. There are also a few
instances of specific topics, for which a connection between
Indian systems and Western theorizing has been drawn, such
as the issue of consciousness and deep sleep examined by
Thompson (2015). The basic difference between our attempt and
previous approaches is that we do not begin with a specific topic
(e.g., meditation or deep sleep) and see what Eastern approaches
have to say about it but instead, we start with a complete Indian
system and explore in which areas in Western psychology general
hypotheses derived from this system could make a difference.
Here, for want of space, we will concentrate on a prominent
combined Indian system: Samkhya-Yoga. Although we are not
aware of any systematic research in the West that explicitly relates
to the (rather broad) hypotheses to be derived from the SamkhyaYoga system, some Western researchers might have had such
hypotheses in mind when conducting their research. There are,
however, plenty of studies whose results can be used to evaluate
the Samkya-Yoga view and we will summarize and evaluate
this evidence below. In addition, for each hypothesis, we will
make suggestions for more precise hypotheses to be examined in
further research.
Before we begin, it is probably necessary to clarify two central
issues. One is the apparent incompatibility of the religious aspects
contained in the Indian systems on the one hand and secular
Western (psychological) science on the other: Is it really possible
to build a bridge between the two? And the other question that
arises if one comes to a positive conclusion for the first issue is
this: How can such a bridge be built, with such different contexts
and nomenclatures?
If one regards the Indian systems as solely religions that
tell one what and what not to believe, then such an endeavor
would make little sense. However, if one sees the psychological
content in these systems as empirically grounded theories, then
there is nothing that in principle speaks against making such a
comparison. Indeed, Buddhist insights, for instance, rest on the
experiences the Buddha (and also many of his followers) obtained
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the name Veda (wisdom), which date back several millennia2 .
It is, however, difficult to derive psychological theories directly
from the Vedas because they contain considerable portions that
are concerned with rituals and are often written in a poetic
and aphoristic style. Therefore, we relied on a systematically
elaborated system that contains widely accepted scholarly
explanations of the Vedas3 .
to the theories of cognition contained in the Indian views
in a way most experts in the respective fields would agree
upon.
Despite the two above-mentioned potential obstacles, we
think that the task attempted here is overdue and worthwhile,
because if the discrepant theoretical aspects contained in
ancient Indian systems eventually turn out to be strongly
empirically corroborated, they hold a large potential to
enrich psychological theorizing by giving a comprehensive
theoretical framework for some hitherto more or less unrelated
areas of research and by introducing new hypotheses into
mainstream psychology. Because our argument is of a general
nature, we will be concerned not so much with minute
details of the system we describe but more with its central
aspects, and especially those that are not or only partly
consistent with Western views. To explicate these aspects
we thought it necessary to also give some background
information.
Cognition in Everyday Life
In Yoga and Samkhya, a person consists of two “components,”
one material and one not (for details see Dasgupta, 1930;
Chatterjee and Datta, 1984; Puligandla, 1997; Jha, 2008; Rao and
Paranjpe, 2008). The material one, prakriti (roughly meaning
nature), is composed of three “qualities,” the three gunas: sattva
(purity), rajas (energy), and tamas (inertia). Prakriti, in the form
the three gunas, is the essence of the universe as well as the basis
for the personality of a given person. The specific personality, as
well as everything material (including the mind), is the product
of a “mixture” of the three gunas.
It is seen as beneficial if sattva is strong because people with
a high level of sattva are expected to have a positive view of the
world, a well-meaning attitude toward others, to be disciplined,
calm, and relaxed, and to have a high stress tolerance and a
healthy lifestyle. People with a high level of rajas, in contrast,
have difficulties relaxing and prefer actions that bring them shortterm pleasure or relief but may be harmful in the long run.
Moreover, they tend to have an unhealthy lifestyle and tend to
waste their energy. Finally, people with a high level of tamas are
dissatisfied with their lives and are most likely to neglect their
health. However, the mixture of the three energies is not seen as
necessarily stable: Increasing the level of sattva is generally seen
as a desirable goal. And only if sattva is dominant in a person will
this person be able to achieve extraordinary spiritual aims (see
below).
The nonmaterial component of a person (and of the world)
is purusha, sometimes translated as true person or true self,
but, especially by Indian academic writers, often rendered as
pure consciousness, the term that we also use here. Note that
whereas the concept of consciousness as used in Western
thinking is always intentional, that is, of or about something,
COGNITION IN SAMKHYA-YOGA
Although occasionally objections can be found to such a view
(e.g., Ranganathan, 2008), the two systems of Samkhya and Yoga
are usually seen as strongly related and therefore often treated
together, which we also will do here. The system of Samkhya
is ascribed to one mythical Kapila, but the earliest works that
date back to the second century BCE seem to have been lost
and the Samkhya Karika of Ishvaraskrishna (about 200 CE,
e.g., Dasgupta, 1997, p. 212) is supposed to be the authentic
text that brings out the essence of Samkhya philosophy (Raju,
1985, p. 305). Yoga represents the practical aspect of Samkhya.
Therefore, the two are treated as allied systems. The main source
of Yoga philosophy is Patañjali’s Yogasutras (see Whiteman,
1993; Woods, 1998, for translations). It is not clear when, exactly,
the Yogasutras were written, but very probably it was somewhere
between the second century BCE (not earlier than 147 BCE,
according to Dasgupta, 1997, p. 212) to the fifth century CE
(Flood, 2004).
We decided on Samkhya-Yoga because apart from containing
quite elaborate psychological theories, it is also arguably one
of the most important of the Indian systems, and because it
contains theoretical aspects that go beyond Western psychology
to a greater extent than other Indian systems1 . The importance
of Samkhya-Yoga can be seen in that references to it are to
be found everywhere in the most important texts, such as
the early Upanishads, the Bhagavad-Gita, and also other parts
of the Mahabharata (Puligandla, 1997, p. 119). Samkhya-Yoga
directly relates to the old Indian scriptures summarized under
2 There is some disagreement as to when, exactly, the Vedas (there are four,
consisting of four parts each) were written: Estimates for the earliest Veda (the
Rig Veda Samhita) range between 3500 BCE and 1200 BCE (e.g., Hiriyanna,
1932/2000, Sharma, 1960/2003, Frawley, 2001; Klostermaier, 2006).
3 Most scholars make a distinction between the so-called orthodox systems, such
as Samkhya-Yoga that are directly based on the Vedas or reactions to them, the
so-called heterodox systems, such as Buddhism. Apart from Samkhya and Yoga,
there are four other orthodox systems that are also usually treated as pairs: Nyaya
and Vaisheshika, and Mimamsa and Vedanta. Advaita Vedanta is a variant of
the system of Vedanta. Besides Buddhism, other important heterodox systems
are Carvaka, a materialistic approach, and Jainism. Although traditionally, most
experts in the field seem to agree with this distinction, some scholars argue
that the difference between orthodox (astika) and heterodox (nastika) schools
might have been exaggerated, Buddhism and Jainism having also belonged to the
“orthodox” class at some time (Nicholson, 2010). A case in point would also be that
later (intermediary) Buddhist developments came very close to Hindu systems of
thought: For instance, the Sarvastivada and Sautantrika schools of Buddhism had
much in common with the Samkhya system (described below in some detail), and
the Vaisheshika school (Kalupahana, 1991, p. 22).
1 One
might argue that another later system, Advaita Vedanta, is the most famous
Indian system, and its greatest authority, Shankara, might be the most famous
Indian philosopher-sage ever to have lived (Flood, 2004, p. 239), but the theory
of cognition in Advaita Vedanta was very much influenced by Samkhya-Yoga and
is similar to it in many respects. Therefore, and also for want of space, we omitted
Advaita Vedanta in this paper. The system of (early) Buddhism (based on the so
called Pali Canon) would also have been a promising candidate but we decided
against it for want of space. Other Hindu systems such as Nyaya and Vaisheshika
are in many respects very similar to Western thinking and therefore would not add
much to the main argument brought forward in this paper.
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to be of a vastly more subtle material than the body (including
the brain) and the senses. Note that in Samkhya-Yoga, the mind,
although material, is nonlocal; that is, it need not be situated
in the brain (e.g., Rao, 2005). Most importantly, and of course
fundamentally different from the Western view, the mind does
not work on itself: Conscious cognition needs the connection
between the intellect and the central component in the Yoga
system: pure consciousness.
pure consciousness has no qualities or characteristics of its own
but underlies all our being and knowing. Together, prakriti and
purusha constitute the manifest world as well as the person in its
full sense. Figure 1 indicates the relationship between purusha
and prakriti (everything except purusha) and illustrates how
a person cognizes according to the Yoga system. The mind
contains dispositions and memories of all sorts and has three
functional aspects, sense mind, ego mind, and intellectual mind
or intellect.
How, for instance, does perception work in this approach? The
sense mind chooses an external object through the peripheral
sense organs. This object is then appropriated by the ego mind
that relates the object to itself (“I perceive the object”). Then,
the intellect represents the object (takes on the form of the
object) and makes a judgment or decides about possible actions.
The intellect, which is by nature unconscious (part of prakriti),
becomes conscious (and cognitions become possible) only when
it makes contact with purusha. In other words, without the
working of purusha it would not be possible to cognize at all.
However, for untrained persons, the contact between purusha
and the intellect only works in one direction. Whereas purusha
“uses” the intellect, the intellect only reflects pure consciousness
without “seeing” it in its pure form. However, this reflection
gives us self-consciousness and our subjective experience of the
world. The information the mind uses does not have to come
from the senses alone. It might also come from inferences,
verbal sources, or memory. In addition, it contains instinctual
tendencies inherited from the effects of past actions and from
previous lives that have their effect in the present life. The intellect
itself contains memory contents form prior experiences (and
from prior lives).
Let us illustrate the working of the mind with the help of an
example. If, for instance, the senses are presented a banana, the
sense mind gets all the impressions of color, shape, taste, and so
forth, combines them, and separates the total unified object built
in this way from other objects. Then the ego mind appropriates
the object as its own, as in “I see a banana.” At this stage of
perception, the object in question (e.g., a banana) is an object of
one’s experience but is not seen as an object of the objective world.
The intellect makes it such an object through an assertion or a
decision yielding something like “this is a banana” as the result
of the decision process. Moreover, in conjunction with the other
parts of the mind it collects different aspects of the banana, such
as the banana tree, my eating it, its price, its nutrients, and so
forth, and relates them to the perceived banana. This experience
is also saved as a memory. However, the whole process only works
with the help of pure consciousness that is “reflected” in the mind
and senses.
All levels of the mind are assumed to have material form but
they differ in subtleness, the intellect being the most subtle and
the sense mind the least4 . All components, however, are assumed
Extraordinary Cognition and How to
Obtain It
As already mentioned, under normal conditions, pure
consciousness is only reflected in the intellect and not recognized.
Gaining access to pure consciousness and dwelling therein is, in
fact, the highest aim in the system of Yoga (to see reality as it
is), to be brought about by making the sattva part of the three
gunas dominant: One could even say that the goal of Yoga is the
yogi’s “sattvification” (“yogi” standing for the person pursuing
the path of Yoga as described in the Yogasutras). The result of
having gained access to pure consciousness and dwelling therein
is known in the literature as, for instance, “enlightenment” or
“realization.” And consequently, the Yoga system also has a
procedure for reaching that desirable state.
How can one arrive at the state of pure consciousness? To
understand this, one has to know that according to Yoga, the
state of the conscious mind is constantly changing or fluctuating,
and there are single units of awareness. These units can be
valid cognitions arising from perception (as described above),
inference, or verbal sources, but they can also be doubts and
uncertain or false cognitions. Moreover, they can come from
memory and they do not necessarily have to represent some
real object or event. Sleep is also considered to be such a kind
of unit. As long as there is this fluctuation of the mind, pure
consciousness cannot be accessed; but it is already present and
without its presence, the mind would not be able to produce
conscious cognitions. Only if the fluctuations of the mind can be
brought to a standstill will the connection between intellect and
pure consciousness become strong enough to achieve the desired
access and enable the yogi to dwell in pure consciousness5 .
According to the Yoga philosophy, fluctuations of the mind
are brought about by the existence of the so-called five kleshas
or hindrances (see second book of Yogasutras). The suffering in
life reflected in the fluctuations of the mind is due to ignorance
about pure consciousness and therefore life becomes driven by
sensory inputs and ego cravings. Not surprisingly, therefore, the
first and fundamental hindrance is spiritual ignorance, that is,
the inability to discriminate between good and evil, truth and
(and therefore less subtle) whereas the intellectual mind is responsible for the
connection to the non-material purusha (and therefore most subtle).
5 In the classic account, the yogi who has achieved liberation, that is, dwells in
pure consciousness, gives up contact with mundane life because staying there
will destroy his knowledge and bring him back to a life of bondage (e.g.,
Jayashanmugam, 2002). This assumption has, however, been questioned by more
recent yoga philosophers (“yoga” in small letters standing here for the practice,
in contrast to the Yoga system) such as Swami Vivekananda and Rama Tirtha
(Srinivas, 2004); and also Sri Aurobindo’s Integral Yoga claims that the goal of
liberation can be reached within everyday life (Sri Aurobindo, 1996; Maitra, 2001).
A similar view seems to be held by contemporary authors (e.g., Phillips, 2009).
4 In Samkhya-Yoga and basically all other Indian theoretical approaches, the
different aspects of mind are seen as material. However, the material parts are so
subtle that they, for instance, cannot be seen by normal vision (similar, one could
argue, to the Chi postulated in Chinese medicine). The difference in subtleness
assumed by the theory is probably due to the different functions of the three
aspects of the mind. The sense mind is directly connected with the material world
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FIGURE 1 | Graphic description of how cognition works according to Samkhya-Yoga.
of meditating, of the object concentrated upon, and of their ego
mind, that is, of themselves concentrating on the object. Then, in
the stage of contemplation, consciousness of the act of meditation
disappears. And in the state of absorption, the ego mind also
dissolves, and meditators become one with the object.
On the way to attaining freedom, the yogi may (as in
the Buddhist path) acquire several kinds of extraordinary
cognitions (siddhis) when the last three steps mentioned above
are applied in certain ways and to certain objects (see third
book of the Yogasutras; see also Braud, 2008). Examples are
knowledge of the past and future, clairvoyance, clairaudience,
psychokinesis, and telepathy. But the ultimate aim of developing
extraordinary cognition is (as in Buddhist approaches), liberation
or enlightenment, which can be described in Samkhya-Yoga
as gaining unobstructed access to and then dwelling in pure
consciousness, without any further reincarnation.
falsehood, the permanent and the impermanent, and so forth.
The other four hindrances are attachment to or involvement in
the thirst, greed, and craving for enjoyment, hate or aversion of
anything considered painful, the feeling of a (mistaken) personal
identity, and the desire to continue to be what one is and the
instinctive fear of death.
The way to attain freedom, that is, to attain access to
pure consciousness, or realize one’s true self is presented as
a path involving eight stages that eventually help the mind
reach quietness by completely restraining all its functions. This
eightfold path consists of five steps that include rules of moral
conduct as well as bodily and breathing exercises and the
practice of focusing one’s attention inward, and three steps
that can be seen as concentration practices. In particular, the
first five steps concern ethics, inner spiritual discipline, body
postures, breath control, and control of the senses; and the
last three steps consist of concentration, contemplation, and the
meditative state of absorption. One might see the control of
the senses as the bridge between the first four “outer stages”
and the last three “inner stages,” whereas the last four parts
(including control of the senses) can be regarded as aspects
of meditation.
The control of the senses is achieved by different techniques
that bring the mind’s focus to a single point in the body
and culminates in consciously withdrawing attention from
anything that is distracting for the mind. Then, in the step
of concentration, practitioners are to focus their mind on a
chosen object without consciousness wavering from it. In this
step, the meditators’ (meta-) awareness is conscious of the act
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HOW MAY THE SAMKHYA-YOGA VIEW OF
COGNITION AND CONSCIOUSNESS
COMPLEMENT AND EXTEND WESTERN
THEORIZING?
Although there are many similarities between theories of
cognition in contemporary Western psychology and the one
outlined for Samkhya-Yoga, it should also have become clear that
the theory of cognition described above does in several respects
differ from the Western view, which is, of course, also not really
uniform but contains many variations. We counted as “Western
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Cognition in Ancient Indian Approaches
view” any theoretical approach within Western psychology we
were aware of that had made it into a major journal.
In Samkhya-Yoga, there is a controlling instance, the mind,
which governs how information is processed and acted upon.
One might argue that the tri-partition into sense mind, ego mind,
and intellect is different from Western conceptions of the mind
but these conceptions seem not to have been specified in enough
detail to allow for precise predictions that are different from those
derivable from Western accounts.
Below, we briefly summarize several main points in which
we think the views of cognition in Samkhya-Yoga complement
and extend the Western views, in the form of four rather broad
hypotheses. For each of the hypotheses, we first summarize
empirical evidence that stems almost exclusively from research
not concerned with theories from ancient Indian psychology,
and then suggest ways to test the respective hypotheses in more
specific ways.
Further Research
Although this concept of personality might seem strange at
first glance to many Western readers it is likely the result of
long-term empirical investigations of differences in personality
and could at least be regarded as a working model for further
research, which could prove especially useful in examining the
effects of meditation and other yoga practices. So far, in Western
studies, with the exception of Puta’s (2016) study, measurement to
examine the effects of yoga and meditation (see next paragraph)
has mainly relied on devices that were not derived from a theory
of meditation. In contrast, sattvification is the main result to be
expected from yoga practice and therefore, Samkhya-Yoga would
suggest that a guna questionnaire be a central measurement
device to assess the effects of yoga (including meditation).
Moreover, it might be promising to explore whether predominant
Western views, such as the Big-Five personality system (e.g.,
McCrae and John, 1992) could be complemented by this ancient
view.
Three Gunas Hypothesis
Cognitive Training Hypothesis
According to the Samkhya system, every personality can be
described as a mixture of three “qualities,” the three gunas:
sattva, rajas, and tamas. Knowing the specific mixture for a given
person allows for predictions about that person’s experiences
and behavior. This conception of personality is so different
from prevalent Western personality theories that it warrants a
hypothesis of its own.
The cognitive training hypothesis states that the practice of
yoga has profound positive effects on all aspects of cognition
understood in a very broad sense. This hypothesis is not as
explicitly stated in the original writings as the other three dealt
with in this paper, but it has received by far the highest attention
in contemporary Western research. One could say that the
main purpose of Samkhya-Yoga theory is to provide the basis
for improving one’s life and eventually discovering the “true
reality” by acquiring extraordinary forms of cognition—that is,
to “see” the world (including oneself) as it really is. But on
the way toward fulfilling this goal, one should already expect
positive changes in basically all psychological aspects that are
open to improvement. Why? The applied part in the Yoga
system, Patañjali’s eightfold path prominently includes aspects
of meditation. Practicing it, along with heeding ethical rules
of conduct and performing bodily exercises, should lead to a
person’s sattvification accompanied by a reduction of the five
hindrances [spiritual ignorance, greed, hatred, the feeling of
a (mistaken) personal identity, and the desire to continue to
be what one is]. As the main practice in yoga meditation is
concentration, one should also expect increases in attention,
concentration, and in general, cognitive abilities. Therefore, the
practice of yoga should be expected to have quite comprehensive
positive effects on all aspects of cognition, either directly or
indirectly via modifications of emotions and personality traits.
We are not aware of any attempt to examine the combined
effect of the eightfold path of the Yogasutras, or of comparative
studies that, for instance, looked at the effect of following the
ethics parts compared to the meditation part or a combination
thereof. Moreover, terms are often used quite differently in
Western contexts. Whereas the term yoga was originally meant
to include all eight parts of the eightfold yoga path, in the
West, it often stands for only one or two limbs of the path,
that is, for the practice of body postures, sometimes combined
with breath control exercises6 . Also, the term meditation is
Empirical Evidence
The concept of the gunas has already been elaborated, mostly
by Indian psychologists, and connected to issues of illness and
psychological well-being (e.g., Lakshmi Bhai et al., 1975; Sharma,
1999; Narayanan and Krishnan, 2003; Sitamma, 2005; Murthy
and Kumar, 2007; Rani and Rani, 2009; Suneetha and Srikrishna,
2009). There also have already been, mostly in the Indian
context, several empirical investigations that focus on attempts to
operationalize the guna concept with questionnaires (e.g., Mohan
and Sandhu, 1986; Das, 1991; Marutham et al., 1998; Wolf,
1998; Stempel et al., 2006). Studies using these questionnaires
generally found positive correlations between sattva guna and
positive emotions and personality traits (e.g., Lakshmi Bhai
et al., 1975; Sharma, 1999; Narayanan and Krishnan, 2003;
Sitamma, 2005; Murthy and Kumar, 2007; Rani and Rani, 2009;
Suneetha and Srikrishna, 2009). The results of the attempt to
find factors that correspond with the gunas and the impact of
several treatments on changes in the gunas were not in full
agreement, but overall, they seem promising (for an overview,
see Puta and Sedlmeier, 2014). Very recently, Puta (2016), in
two large studies, developed a new comprehensive guna scale
with nine separate subscales that each measure the gunas in
one single behavioral category each (e.g., cognition, emotion,
etc.). This scale does not suffer from the deficiencies that can
be found in former attempts. In a further intervention study,
she examined the effects of a yoga-based intervention program
that included meditation, cognitive restructuring, managing
energy and will-power, and mindful decision making and found
substantial increases in sattva, as well as decreases in rajas and
tamas.
Frontiers in Psychology | www.frontiersin.org
6 The
term yoga stands for a collection of different practices and is not to be mixed
up with the philosophical system of Yoga (here written with a capital Y). Apart
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usually used in a quite indiscriminative sense and many of the
meditation techniques in use are recent elaborations of ancient
techniques. But nonetheless, if beneficial effects can already be
seen when the eightfold path is practiced to some degree, this
should count as partial evidence for the more comprehensive
hypothesis.
Although therapy was not an explicit concern in the
original systems, in which adepts were usually required to
come with a stable personality as a precondition to being
accepted by a spiritual teacher (e.g., Feuerstein, 2001), there
is a long tradition of incorporating techniques from Buddhist
and Hindu yoga approaches, mostly some kind of meditation,
into Western approaches to psychotherapy. Apart from these
connections to clinical psychology, yoga techniques are only
recently gaining more attention in mainstream academic
psychology, but there is also another potential link: The
cognitive training part of the Indian systems might be seen
as having many similarities to recent developments in health
psychology, positive psychology, and related fields (Gillham
and Seligman, 1999; Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi, 2000;
Kahneman et al., 2003; Seligman et al., 2005, 2006; Robbins,
2008; Ryff and Singer, 2008; Diener and Ryan, 2009; Diener,
2013; Lynn et al., 2015). In these recent Western approaches,
a central aim is to explore ways to make people happier, also
emphasizing eudaemonic, in contrast to hedonic, conceptions
of happiness7 . Among the techniques proposed there, one
finds traditional relaxation methods but increasingly also yoga
and meditation techniques, including forms of “meditation in
movement” such as Qi Gong (for overview see Malaktaris et al.,
2015).
There is a steadily growing number of studies examining
the effects of yoga techniques, including meditation. Given the
already huge number of such studies, especially those on the
effects of some kind of meditation, and for want of space, we will
restrict this overview to summary reports (mostly meta-analyses)
of the psychological effects of yoga and meditation, separately for
studies with clinical and nonclinical populations.
Psychological Effects of Yoga/Meditation with
Clinical Populations
Quite a number of studies have examined the effects of yoga and
meditation on measures of mental health in clinical populations.
In these studies, the term “yoga” has been used in many
different variations, sometimes referring to only certain postures,
sometimes to combinations of postures and breath exercises,
and sometimes also including some kind of (concentrative)
meditation; but in no case did we find effects of adhering to
ethical or spiritual aspects explicitly mentioned.
Büssing et al. (2012a) give an overview of the summary studies
on the clinical effects of yoga interventions on mental (and
physical) health. Aspects of mental health dealt with in these
studies were depression, fatigue, anxiety disorders, stress, and
posttraumatic disorders. For all these aspects, beneficial effects
of yoga had been found. However, the authors caution that
many of the studies are of poor methodological quality, and
that there is a huge heterogeneity in the populations studied,
the yoga interventions, the comparison groups, and the outcome
measures. The effects of yoga on fatigue were reported in more
detail in a separate meta-analysis that included 19 studies with
patients suffering from various illnesses (Boehm et al., 2012).
Overall, the effect of yoga was rather small, amounting to d =
0.27 standard deviation units. In a further meta-analysis that
concentrated on yoga’s pain-related effects, apart from finding
moderate effects for decreasing pain of different sorts, Büssing
et al. (2012b) reported a positive average effect (in standard
deviation units) on pain patients’ mood stages of d = 0.65, in
six yoga studies. Cramer et al. (2013) summarized the outcomes
of yoga in nine studies with patients with depressive disorders
and individuals with elevated levels of depression. They found
moderate evidence (d = 0.69) for a short-term effect of yoga on
severity of depression compared to usual care. The evidence was
more limited when effects of yoga were compared to relaxation
training or aerobic exercises. A subgroup analysis indicated that
yoga was more effective if body postures were combined with
meditation.
Whereas studies on the effects of yoga (understood in the
more narrow sense of body postures and breath exercises,
sometimes combined with meditation) on mental health seem to
have been conducted only over the past four decades (Büssing
et al., 2012a), there have long been attempts to bring together
meditation and psychotherapy. In an early literature survey,
Smith (1975) acknowledged therapeutic benefits of meditation
but concluded that the evidence available was insufficient to
decide whether meditation or just context or expectation effects
caused the positive outcomes. A more recent narrative review by
McGee (2008) summarized beneficial effects on a wide variety of
mental health problems and in further meta-analyses, positive
effects on substance abuse (Alexander et al., 1994b) and on
general health (Grossman et al., 2004) were found. However,
another comprehensive review concluded that overall, “the
therapeutic effects of meditation practices cannot be established
based on the current literature” (Ospina et al., 2007, p. 6).
Similarly, a more recent meta-analysis by Goyal et al. (2014)
found moderate effects (d = 0.23 to 0.38) of meditation on
anxiety, depression, and pain but low evidence for stress and
from the approach described above, there are many more (for an overview, see
(Feuerstein, 2001); see also (Phillips, 2009), for more recent developments). Here
we just mention some of these alternative approaches, which all relate in some
way to the Yogasutras and which all have the aim of liberating the practitioner
from a limited experience of the world. Three other main approaches already
described in the Bhagavadgita are jnana yoga, bhakti yoga, and karma yoga. Jnana
yoga, the path of knowledge, relies heavily on the study of old scriptures and
on intellectual insight; bhakti yoga, the path of devotion, cultivates the practice
of devoting one’s life to the love of God; and karma yoga, the path of action,
consists of doing everything without being attached to the fruits of action. In
Kundalini yoga, practitioners work to awake Kundalini, some kind of spiritual
energy, and in Mantra yoga, (holy) syllables or words (such as OM) or phrases
are used (usually internally repeated) for the purpose of meditation. There are also
somewhat paradoxical kinds of yoga, usually summarized under the name of tantra
yoga, in which rules stuck to in the conventional yoga systems such as eating no
meat or abstaining from sexual activity are systematically broken to free the mind
from the (relative) perceptions of the world and enable the practitioner to gain
insight and liberation.
7 Whereas hedonism refers to the usual conception of well-being, that is, striving
for maximization of pleasure (positive affect) and minimization of pain (negative
affect), proponents of the concept of eudaemonia (such as Aristotle) hold that true
happiness is found by leading a virtuous life and doing what is worth doing, even
if doing so might not be immediately pleasing or rewarding.
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to that obtained in psychotherapy studies. The effects varied,
however, for different types of variables. Effects were strongest—
medium to large according to Cohen’s (1992) conventions—
for emotionality and relationship issues, and less strong (about
medium) for variables that measured attention and cognitive
measures. Due to the scarcity of studies that examined a given
specific approach to meditation, they could be grouped into only
three coarse categories: studies done with (a) Transcendental
Meditation, (b) Buddhist meditation techniques, and (c) other
techniques. Overall, and in contrast to the previous meta-analyses
that found superior effects for Transcendental Meditation,
there was no difference in global effect sizes for these three
groups, although they differed in respect to several variables.
Transcendental Meditation studies yielded comparatively large
effects for the reduction of anxiety and negative emotions,
and for learning and memory; Buddhist meditation techniques
showed higher effects for the reduction of negative personality
traits, stress reduction, and the improvement of attention and
mindfulness than the other two categories; and even the “other”
category had a comparatively strong effect in measures of
cognitive ability. There are even pronounced differences in
effects within specific categories of meditation such as the
Buddhist meditation techniques: Whereas “pure” meditation had
the highest effects on mindfulness and attention, additional
breathing exercises and body postures led to stronger effects for
most other psychological variables examined in the respective
studies (Eberth and Sedlmeier, 2012).
The results reported by Sedlmeier et al. (2012) were stable
according to several bias analyses, and in contrast to the clinical
studies reviewed by Goyal et al. (2014), meditation remained
superior to methods used by active control groups, such as groups
receiving cognitive restructuring or relaxation training. Thus,
one might regard the empirical effects of meditation in healthy
populations as more or less established. However, as yet there is
little evidence about the impact of the context of meditation.
mental-health-related quality of life. These authors also found no
evidence that meditation programs were noticeably better than
active treatment (for similar results see Strauss et al., 2014).
Despite a general impression of (moderately) positive effects,
many studies are still plagued with methodological problems
and problems of interpretation because of the substantial
heterogeneity of studies in almost all imaginable aspects (see
also Forfylow, 2011). Moreover, it is still unclear whether yoga
and meditation are substantially better than existing therapies
(e.g., Smith et al., 2007). However, taken together, the evidence
suggests that yoga and meditation can help reduce a variety of
mental problems such as anxiety, depression, and pain at least
in some clinical populations and might, if not replace existing
therapies, at least serve as an adjunct treatment.
Effects of Yoga/Meditation in Nonclinical Populations
As already mentioned, the yoga path was originally not meant
to solve mental or physical problems but as a way to gain
enlightenment. Therefore, nonclinical populations would be
more suitable to test the predictions of Samkhya-Yoga, but
such populations have seldom been examined, at least not when
studying the effects of body-centered yoga techniques. The only
meta-analysis we could find was one by Patel et al. (2012) that
examined the effects of a variety of yoga techniques on physical
functioning and health-related quality of life in older adults. This
meta-analysis (n = 18 studies) found moderate positive effects of
yoga (around d = 0.5) for a variety of physical effects as well as
for depressive symptoms and quality of sleep, but no effects for
cognition or attentional variables.
In contrast to the scarcity of studies on the impact of bodycentered yoga techniques, there have been hundreds of studies
on the impact of meditation, both for physiological and brain
measures and psychological variables (see Murphy et al., 1997,
for a large collection of early studies). The psychological effects
of meditation have been summarized in several meta-analyses
for nonclinical groups of practitioners, mostly conducted by
members of the Maharishi International University (Eppley et al.,
1989; Alexander et al., 1991, 1994a). These meta-analyses found
strong effects on measures of trait anxiety and self-actualization,
and strong reductions in drug use, as well as a general superiority
of Transcendental Meditation, an approach that is commonly
traced back to the ancient Advaita Vedanta system, compared to
other methods. However, these analyses looked at only a small
number of dependent variables (mostly trait anxiety and selfactualization) and there were several methodological problems
connected with a substantial number of studies used in the
analyses. Quite a few of the studies used only a pre–post design
without a control group, which leads to low internal validity, and
effect sizes in such studies tend to be overestimations (Dunlap
et al., 1996).
According to Samkhya-Yoga (as well as other Hindu and
Buddhist systems), the practice of meditation should lead to
benefits on basically all psychological dimensions that can be
conceived of in a positive–negative dimension. This was indeed
the common result in a recent comprehensive meta-analysis
(Sedlmeier et al., 2012) comprising 163 studies. This metaanalysis found an overall effect size (d = 0.58) comparable
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Further Research
In sum, there is indeed sound empirical evidence in favor of the
cognitive training hypothesis, based on examining the impact
of practicing the eightfold path to some degree. There is some
indication that effects might be stronger if the yoga path is
applied in a more comprehensive manner, combining both bodycentered and meditation exercises. However, some more specific
aspects of the cognitive training hypothesis have, to the best of
our knowledge, not been examined, so far.
One of these aspects concerns the expected effects and their
measurement. In the preceding paragraph, we already mentioned
that according to Samkhya-Yoga, effects that can be described
as a preponderance of the sattva guna should increase with
increase in yoga practice. A corresponding decrease is to be
expected for the five kleshas. We are not aware of any systematic
attempt to construct a klesha questionnaire that would allow for
measuring the effects of yoga practice. A central effect associated
with diminishing kleshas is a decrease in the fluctuations of the
mind; and a potential way to measure fluctuations of the mind
might be to use the measurement devices developed in research
on mind wandering. There are indeed first results that indicate a
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Because the achievements of previous lives (karma) also
play an important role, one would expect some evidence for
such siddhis in a randomly selected sample because any sample
can be expected to contain people who either practice yoga
now or have practiced it in their former lives. However, the
general hypothesis would be that the more advanced yoga
practitioners are (especially in respect to their concentrative
meditation practice), the more likely extraordinary abilities are
to arise. There are only a few studies that directly examined the
extraordinary cognition hypothesis but its examination makes
much more sense if one could show that the postulated effects
exist at all. This more basic hypothesis has been researched
for more than a century in Western psychology (e.g., James,
1898; Kelly et al., 2007) and we will first give a quick summary
of the results. The topic has never made it into mainstream
psychology although there is a long tradition of research on
the respective phenomena, often termed psi effects, following
a suggestion by Thouless and Wiesner (1947). As far as
psi phenomena such as telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition,
and psychokinesis are concerned, a minority of researchers
established their connection to an Indian background a long time
ago (e.g., James, 1896, 1898; Myers, 1903) and this was renewed
very recently, but usually not by psychologists (e.g., Targ, 2012;
Radin, 2013). Notable exceptions are researchers (including quite
a few nonpsychologists) working on a revival of ancient Indian
psychology (e.g., Rao et al., 2008; Rao, 2010; Cornelissen et al.,
2014).
systematic effect of (mindfulness) meditation on mind wandering
(e.g., Mrazek et al., 2013).
A second aspect not yet examined relates to the practice itself.
The practice of yoga according to the Yogasutras consists of eight
clearly specified stages, which have not been examined, so far,
in their entirety. In addition to comparing the combined effect
of the eight stages to effects of single stages (such as body or
breathing exercises), it would also be very promising to examine
the relative impact of the different stages of the path. To the best
of our knowledge, the impact of the ethical part of yoga, and that
of inner spiritual discipline have not been examined at all, so far.
It is also still an open question whether meditation alone, that is,
any of the four last stages of the eight-fold path or combinations
thereof are sufficient to reach the postulated effects or whether
the other four parts are a necessary requirement8 .
A third interesting aspect that combines the two issues
discussed above concerns person specific recommendations and
might be examined in an exploratory manner, starting with an
initial measurement of the “guna-mixture” for a given person.
Dependent on meditators’ personalities it might be especially
beneficial if they concentrated on specific items of the eight-fold
path or different combinations thereof (for a related approach
see Frawley and Summerfiled Kozak, 2001). This is an issue dealt
with in the traditional teacher student relationship in Hindu yoga
practice. There, the teachers administer specific practices to their
students dependent on the latters’ personalities and progress on
the path. So one way to start this exploratory research might be
to interview experienced teachers (gurus).
Summaries of Psi Research Results
Research on psi phenomena (parapsychology and psychic
phenomena are used as synonyms here) has produced a
huge body of results that were collected largely in carefully
controlled trials (e.g., Utts, 1991). However, almost all of these
studies were not concerned with the impact of yoga practice
or meditation, and quite often had undergraduates (and not
advanced practitioners of yoga) as participants.
We cannot provide a comprehensive overview of all these
research results, old and new, for want of space (see Radin, 2006,
2013; Rao, 2010, for such overviews, and May, 1995, 1996; Targ,
2012; Radin, 2013, p. 268, for some striking anecdotal examples),
but we will summarize the results of research traditions within
psi research that have produced enough studies to allow for
meta-analyses. Table 1 gives an overview on the size of effects
found in four areas, into which psi research is often divided.
All the effect sizes given in Table 1 can (roughly) be interpreted
as standard deviation units (d) even though the original effect
sizes were sometimes expressed differently (for details see
Honorton and Ferrari, 1989, p. 283; Utts, 1996, p. 24; Radin,
2005, p. 96).
The mean effect sizes shown in Figure 1, are not higher than
what is conventionally considered a small effect (d = 0.2, see
Cohen, 1988) and sometimes even much smaller, especially for
psychokinesis studies. Is this small (but stable) overall effect
consistent with the predictions of Samkhya-Yoga (and other
Indian systems)? We think that it could be interpreted in this way.
One should keep in mind that Samkhya-Yoga mainly predicts the
possibility of the arising of siddhis or extraordinary abilities for
Extraordinary Cognition Hypothesis
When practicing the eightfold path described in the Yogasutras,
one may acquire extraordinary forms of cognition, such as
knowledge of the past and future, clairvoyance, clairaudience,
psychokinesis, and telepathy (among others). According to the
Yogasutras (verse 1 of book 4), such powers can be acquired
by birth (as the result of accumulated karma), or from herbs,
but they also come in a systematic way from yoga practice. To
the best of our knowledge, the scriptures do not differentiate
between the effects of specific items of the eight-fold path but
one might argue, consistently with Buddhist assumptions, where
one mainly expects the effects of extraordinary cognition to
arise with concentrative techniques (Shamata meditation—see
Buddhagosa, 2010) that the concentrative parts of yoga are
especially suited to produce such extraordinary abilities (siddhis).
Although the scriptures are not explicit about this, the main
mechanism responsible for such abilities might be tied to the
nonlocal nature of the three aspects of the mind as conceived
in Samkhya-Yoga. There, (as well as in many other Indian
systems), such extraordinary abilities are not seen as central,
though. On the contrary, they are often regarded as hindrances
to experiencing the world (including ourselves) as it really is (e.g.,
De Silva, 2005; Braud, 2008; see also verse 37 of the third book
of Patañjali’s Yogasutras; for an opposing contemporary view see
Phillips, 2009, p. 62).
8 Similar
issues are currently discussed for secular mindfulness-meditation
programs that originally stem from Buddhist approaches (e.g., Amaro, 2015).
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TABLE 1 | Results in meta-analyses on psi phenomena, divided up into four areas of research: telepathy (receiving information from somebody distant in
space), clairvoyance (perceiving events at a distance in space), precognition (receiving information about future events), and psychokinesis (influencing
physical objects or physical and physiological processes by one’s conscious intention).
Area of psi research
Brief description of task
Telepathy
Clairvoyance
Precognition
Psychokinesis
ES
N (Studies)
Authors
Ganzfeld effecta
0.20
11
Honorton et al., 1990
same
0.14
29
Storm et al., 2010ab
Perceiving or “viewing” and describing an unknown randomly chosen remote
geographical target to which an agent had been sent
0.20
1215
Utts, 1996
same
0.21
653
Dunne and Jahn, 2003
Predicting cards and numbers to be randomly chosen later on
0.02
309
Honorton and Ferrari, 1989
Human physiological processes as a predictor of future important or arousing
events
0.21
26
Mossbridge et al., 2012
Human intention on the output of random-number-generating device
0.003
832
Radin and Nelson, 1989
same
0.01
148
Radin and Ferrari, 1991
same
0.001c
377
Bösch et al., 2006
Human intention on electrodermal activity (EDA) of people at a remote place [two
meta-analyses]
0.11
36
Schmidt et al., 2004
0.13
15
same
0.09
60
Radin, 2005
Human intention on performance of a second remote person in an attention task at
randomly chosen time intervals
0.11
11
Schmidt, 2012
Effect sizes can be interpreted as standard deviation units and are rounded to two decimals unless the first two decimals are zero.
a In a typical Ganzfeld (German: “whole field”) experiment, a “receiver” is asked to relax in a comfortable chair in a sound-isolated, electrically shielded room. She wears halved Ping-Pong
balls over her eyes and headphones that play pink noise and a lamp shines red light on her face—all procedures that are expected to make the receiver as receptive as possible. The
receiver is asked to describe (into a microphone) the (randomly chosen) target material that is being observed and “sent” by a “sender” in a distant, equally prepared room.
b This meta-analysis also reviews several other meta-analyses on the ganzfeld effect, which on average yielded effect sizes comparable to the one in this study.
c Bösch et al. (2006, Table 4) report a mean proportion for all studies (here: their result for the random effects model without three outliers), which was transformed into a mean correlation
using the formula they give in the note to their Table 1 (p. 499). This correlation was then transformed into standard deviation units (d) assuming equal sample sizes (see Rosenthal and
Rosnow, 1991).
practitioners of yoga and meditation only after a period of intense
practice, whereas studies conducted in psi research usually were
done with inexperienced participants (inexperienced both in psi
research and meditation), for whom one would not expect much
of an effect.
Although the results of the psi studies reported here are
consistent with the predictions of Samkhya-Yoga, this does of
course, not exclude other explanations (for a recent brain-based
model, see Marwaha and May, 2015).
counterargument, at least for the first point, would be that
data of any kind are (and actually should be expected to be)
inconsistent, that is, results from different studies should vary,
because of the ubiquitous sampling error (Hunter and Schmidt,
1990). Alcock (2003) listed several other problems with psi
research apart from methodological shortcomings: lack of a
good theory and of a proper definition of the subject matter,
problems with the definition of constructs, lack of progress,
failure to jibe with other areas of science, and disinterest in
competing hypotheses. However, none of these criticisms seems
to be an insurmountable obstacle to serious scientific enquiry,
and even skeptics admit that researchers on parapsychology have
a high statistical and methodological sophistication (Hyman,
2010).
Alternative Explanations for Psi Effects
The history of psi research was and is accompanied by hot
debate (e.g., Hyman, 1996, 2010; Storm et al., 2010b; Baptista
and Derakhshani, 2014). Some researchers seem to take the
existence of these phenomena for granted, whereas others a priori
deny the possibility of such effects (e.g., Wiseman, 2011). A
third group of scholars seems to be skeptical but open to both
the possibility of such phenomena and different explanations
for them (e.g., Schooler et al., 2011). Let us have a look at
the main arguments that have been brought forward against
the validity of psi effects. One argument is the difficulty of
reproducing consistent results (e.g., Atmanspacher and Jahn,
2003; Kennedy, 2003), and another is that in the respective metaanalyses, outliers are removed and data are combined across
inconsistent databases, therefore making the interpretation of
average effect sizes arbitrary (e.g., Hyman, 2010). A possible
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Further Research
Overall, the data on psi experiments available, especially those
summarized in meta-analyses (see Table 1), cannot be explained
away as null results and definitely need some explanation.
However, it also seems to us that, to date, the greatest deficit in
psi research is the lack of a comprehensive theory. The Indian
approach detailed above might be a starting point for such a
theory although it also lacks detailed descriptions of the potential
processes involved. Still, it advances an interesting and testable
hypothesis not to be found in previous Western theorizing, for
which there is also some confirming evidence: Psi phenomena
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which means to see this absolute reality, goes far beyond what can
be expected according to the extraordinary cognition hypothesis.
For the moment, the possibility that the relative vs. absolute
hypothesis is wrong cannot be excluded. The hypothesis might
have initially resulted from a perceptual illusion due to sensory
deprivation or perceptual isolation, which, for instance, seems
to be a plausible explanation for some meditation induced light
experiences (Lindahl et al., 2014). Later practitioners who knew
about these reports might have had similar experiences solely
due to expectancy effects. However, given the huge variety and
number of enlightenment accounts, this possibility seems quite
unlikely, and accepting it without further inquiry would cut off a
potentially exciting line of research.
Therefore, it seems worthwhile to examine the experiences
of practitioners who are seen as having reached a state of
enlightenment more systematically, to get a clearer picture of
what the access to absolute reality might be like. The main
approach here has to be of a qualitative nature, but this does not
exclude the necessity to also investigate the neurophysiological
correlates of these experiences. Indeed, preliminary results with
advanced practitioners of a Burmese Vipassana tradition seem
quite promising (Davis and Vago, 2013). There have also been
qualitative studies with very advanced practitioners from the
same tradition, which hint at specific experiences that might
be related to an experience of pure consciousness (Full et al.,
2013).
If an absolute reality exists, its perception should not
be different for practitioners of different traditions, although
it might be expressed differently in these traditions. Thus,
it might be worthwhile to collect already existing personal
accounts that describe enlightenment experiences and check
them for consistency9 . But it might be even more worthwhile to
conduct studies, maybe even a longitudinal ones, with long-term
practitioners who could take over the roles of both researchers
and participants. One could argue that meditation is not only a
topic of research but can also serve as a research method. There
is some evidence that the introspective accuracy of meditators
increases with meditation (Vago and Nakamura, 2011; Fox et al.,
2012; Van Vugt et al., 2012). Eventually, practitioners, once
enlightened, may come to agree (or disagree) on a common
account of what it means to have access to an absolute reality.
Such an agreement might also mean that practitioners from some
or perhaps even all traditions give up tenets from their tradition,
thus helping arrive at an ever more precise version of the
relative vs. absolute reality hypothesis. And even if it eventually
turned out that the relative vs. absolute reality hypothesis was
untenable, a careful examination of practice-induced changes
in cognition and consciousness could be extremely valuable
for advancing our understanding of mental processes in
general.
The approach to be used in such designs has to be largely
of a qualitative nature (see Gergen et al., 2015, for a recent
should be much more prevalent with experienced practitioners
of a yoga path than with arbitrarily chosen participants.
Tasks such as choosing the right number, card or picture
out of several possible options, a kind of task often used
in psi studies, are probably not what the originators of the
ancient Indian theories had in mind when they spoke about
siddhis or extraordinary cognitive abilities. In fact, in psi studies,
larger effects were usually found for more complex stimuli
(Radin, 2013). And there is indeed some indication that yoga
practice might have an impact on cognitive abilities. In general,
meditators do better than nonmeditators in studies in which this
variable (meditation experience) has been taken into account
(see Radin, 2013), and there are a few studies that explicitly
examined this question and obtained markedly better results
for experienced meditators (Schmeidler, 1970, 1994; RoneyDougal and Solfvin, 2006, 2011; Roney-Dougal et al., 2008). The
respective evidence is, however, still scarce and further research
should focus on examining this hypothesis.
Relative vs. Absolute Reality Hypothesis
Samkyha-Yoga holds that there is a clear distinction between
purusha, the absolute reality or pure consciousness (or true
self), and the relative one, prakriti. Whereas prakriti, which also
includes the different aspects of the mind, is material, purusha
is non-material, stable, unchanging, and without qualities, that
is, it could not be regarded as a trait in the conventional sense.
This hypothesis in its general form also applies to all other
Hindu systems of thought. According to all Hindu (and also
Buddhist) schools, true reality can be perceived by people who
have attained the ultimate goal of the respective yoga path, that
is, enlightenment or liberation. There are plenty of first-person
accounts of enlightenment experiences, especially of Eastern
practitioners, and even more accounts of students of people who
claim (or are claimed by their students) to have attained the
state seen as the endpoint of the respective practice prescribed.
However, all the available evidence consists of subjective reports
(e.g., Bucke, 1961; Kapleau, 1989; but see Newberg et al., 2002).
Some readers might ask whether this is a hypothesis that
can be scientifically examined at all. But one could argue
that enlightenment and the associated postulated perception
of absolute reality is just a construct. So it would, at least in
principle, be comparable to other constructs in psychology such
as intelligence, anxiety, or narcissism, to name a few, although
arguably associated with a much lower baseline probability of
existence. The basis for measuring established psychological
constructs is nothing but some kind of verbal response that might
eventually be formalized in the form of a questionnaire. So to
us, there seems to be no convincing a priori argument why the
relative vs. absolute reality hypothesis should not be open to
empirical scrutiny. How could the ancient Indian sages possibly
have come up with the hypothesis of a relative vs. an absolute
reality? If our assumption holds that the theory contained in
Samkhya-Yoga is fully empirically based, these sages must have
had some experiences based on the practice of yoga that were
far removed from usual experiences and not explainable by
conventional knowledge. The Yogasutras and other texts also
make it clear that having gained access to pure consciousness,
Frontiers in Psychology | www.frontiersin.org
9 Here, there is the obvious problem of how to tell whether somebody has attained
enlightenment. In some forms of yoga (understood in a broad sense), for instance,
in Zen, the respective diagnosis is made by the teacher who is also supposed to be
enlightened, but even there some space for doubt and uncertainty remains (e.g.,
Coleman, 2001; Samy, 2013, Chapter 8).
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motivation to use this kind of methodological approach more
comprehensively). Especially suited seems to be a special
kind of a qualitative approach, termed the “second person”
method, where the second person must be experienced and
knowledgeable about the topic in question (meditation or yoga),
must be trained in helping the “first person” in his or her
introspection, and must be able to develop good personal terms
with the “first person” (e.g., Varela and Shear, 1999). Recently,
phenomenological approaches have been suggested that might be
well suited for examining practitioners’ understanding of changes
in consciousness and cognition that are not open to conventional
measurement (Lutz and Thompson, 2003; Thompson, 2009;
Zahavi, 2010).
Such a collaborative research endeavor, if done open
mindedly, would have several advantages compared to
the traditional researcher–participant setup. Obviously, the
qualitative approach is restricted to mental processes we have
access to, but this access is potentially far better than usually
assumed (Petitmengin-Peugeot, 1999; Petitmengin, 2006;
Petitmengin et al., 2013).
lives of our ancestors) and one could conceive of the effects
of previous deeds as being part of our implicit and explicit
memories.
The contents of the Indian systems were presumably derived
by direct experience, which might have yielded insights that are
not possible to gain in the way Western psychology has been
mostly practiced. These insights and the corresponding research
hypotheses are potentially relevant for Western psychology,
but existing research methodology may come to its limits in
examining them empirically.
Related Western Theoretical Approaches
To the best of our knowledge, as yet, there does not exist
a Western comprehensive theory of the effects of yoga
(understood in a broad sense), but there have been several
attempts to explain the effects of meditation, mainly drawing
on Buddhism and incorporating Western theoretical concepts.
Whereas some of the theoretical explanations made close
connections to specific Buddhist systems (e.g., Lutz et al., 2007;
Grabovac et al., 2011), most accounts focused mainly on the
concept of (secular) mindfulness and attempted to explain the
effects of mindfulness practice. Postulated mechanisms include
“metacognitive awareness” (Teasdale et al., 2002; Vago and
Silbersweig, 2012), “positive reappraisal” (Garland et al., 2009),
changes in intention, attention, and attitude (Shapiro et al.,
2006; Lutz et al., 2008), or a combination of processes such
as attention regulation, body awareness, emotion regulation,
and change in perspective on the self (Hölzel et al., 2011;
Teper et al., 2013). It seems very promising to make these
previous approaches more comprehensive by incorporating more
of the theoretical background that already exists in the Indian
systems (see also Awasthi, 2013), where meditation is not some
arbitrary collection of techniques that might be used for some
beneficial health-related purposes but is a necessity to achieve
the highest form of cognition in the respective systems. Having
this background in mind, key issues in meditation research
might, as already mentioned, be the relative importance of
parts of the yoga path, such as moral aspects or aspects that
concern the conduct of daily life. Moreover, an important issue
in this research might be the role of the religious background.
Is it, for instance, necessary to believe in a personal god
(as suggested in the Yoga but not the Samkhya system) to
obtain the full benefits of yoga practice? A comprehensive
theory of meditation does not necessarily have to include all
the processes postulated in a given Indian approach but the
mechanisms postulated there can be a good basis on which
to build such a theory and to derive empirically testable
predictions.
FUTURE THEORY AND RESEARCH
It seems fair to say that, taken together, there is considerable
empirical evidence for at least some of the diverging hypotheses
derived from Samkhya-Yoga and that some of these hypotheses,
if made more precise, have the potential to enrich existing
psychological theories. There are, however, still many gaps that
have to be filled, both in theorizing and research methods.
Issues of Theory
Above, we have dealt with Samkhya-Yoga and Indian systems
in general as if they were “ordinary” psychological theories
or hypotheses. Some researchers involved in the Indian
psychology movement (e.g., some contributors in Rao et al.,
2008; Cornelissen et al., 2014) might not totally agree with
this. However, we conceive of these systems as theories that
were built to explain ordinary experiences but also insights
exceptionally gifted and well-trained people had in ancient
India, and therefore, we think these theories should be open to
empirical scrutiny without any restrictions (see also Sedlmeier
et al., 2014). Our suggestion, however, is not to take the
Indian systems as alternatives to Western cognitive psychology.
The Indian system dealt with here (and others, such as early
Buddhism, or Advaida Vedanta) are much broader in scope than
a randomly selected theory in Western psychology and comprise
basically all psychology-relevant aspects that were known at their
time of origin. However, they are certainly incomplete in many
respects and their embedment in religious and philosophical
contexts might also turn out to be a restriction in some ways.
For instance, the concept of karma, that is, the idea that previous
actions (including those performed in previous lives) have an
effect on present lives might be hard to even provisionally
accept by contemporary Western scholars. However, if one only
looks at the postulated effects, one might, for pragmatic reasons,
want to think of the karmic heritage from previous lives as
genetic factors (that also stem from previous lives, that is, the
Frontiers in Psychology | www.frontiersin.org
Mind–Brain Relationship
Especially interesting for future theorizing might be the
discrepancy in views about the mind–brain relationship between
the Indian approaches and the mainstream Western view. For
most Western researchers there is no doubt that all cognitive
processes including consciousness are produced by the brain
(e.g., Ainslie, 2001; Dennett, 2004; Damasio, 2012). This view is
immediately evident in the computational theories of the mind
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Cognition in Ancient Indian Approaches
also allowing for the measurement of processes (instead of only
results).
Apart from the second-person methods mentioned above,
using a qualitative approach, so-called single-case experimental
designs that allow for drawing causal inferences in a way
similar to randomized group designs might be very useful in
examining hypotheses derived from the Indian systems. Instead
of randomizing over people (as in group designs), these designs,
such as multiple-baseline or alternating treatment designs, use
randomization over time to control for causal influences other
than the independent variables in question (see Barlow et al.,
2009; Sedlmeier et al., 2016).
Probably due to the largely atheoretical way in which
meditation research has, until recently been done, effects of
meditation have been measured in basically every conceivable
way (Sedlmeier et al., 2012). If, however, measurement is based
on theory, as it should be, Samkhya-Yoga would, for instance,
suggest measuring changes in the three gunas, and in the kleshas.
We believe that to examine the hypotheses advanced above, it is
necessary to rethink approaches to measurement, and it will also
be necessary to expand existing methodologies or develop new
ones (Sedlmeier et al., 2016).
and especially in connectionist theories, but even critics of such
theories regard it as an axiom that cannot be doubted (e.g.,
Searle, 2000). The view is well illustrated by a quote from a talk
by Antonio Damasio at the concluding ceremonies of the 1999
“Decade of the Brain” project:
In an effort that continues to gain momentum, virtually all the
functions studied in traditional psychology—perception, learning
and memory, language, emotion, decision-making, creativity—
are being understood in terms of their brain underpinnings. The
mysteries behind many of these functions are being solved, one by
one, and it is now apparent that even consciousness, the towering
problem in the field, is likely to be elucidated before too long” (as
cited in Kelly, 2007, p. xx).
However, how this should work is still something of a mystery,
expressed in Chalmers’s (1995) hard problem of consciousness:
“Why should physical processing give rise to a rich inner life
at all? It seems objectively unreasonable that it should, and
yet it does” (p. 201). How does consciousness arise out of the
functioning of the human brain and how is it related to the
behavior that it accompanies?
The Indian systems obviously did not directly deal with
the brain because some 2000 years ago, there was no way to
monitor brain activity. But brain definitely consists of gross
matter, whereas consciousness in the system of SamkhyaYoga is clearly defined as being nonmaterial. In general,
Indian systems regard the brain as an instrument used by
the mind (e.g., Raju, 1983). That the mind is assumed to go
beyond the brain is also consistent with the hypothesis of the
extraordinary abilities (siddhis) postulated by all major Indian
systems.
Interestingly, there has always been a small minority in
Western academic psychology that did not accept the view that
consciousness is merely an epiphenomenon of brain activity.
James stated as early as 1899 that “matter is not that which
produces Consciousness, but that which limits it, and confines
its intensity within certain limits” (James, 1899; p. 67). A
summary of views and empirical results of researchers adhering
to this minority view is given in Kelly et al. (2007). The
findings summarized above might be taken as a motivation
to further explore the issue of the mind–brain relationship
without a priori excluding the possibility of non-brain based
consciousness.
CONCLUSION
In this article we claim that ancient Indian theories of cognition
have indeed something to offer mainstream Western psychology.
While large portions of the Indian theories are mirrored
in contemporary Western conceptions of cognition, there is
something new in the predictions that can be derived from these
systems. The ancient Indian systems contain some hypotheses
that are not part of mainstream Western academic psychology
and they provide starting points for theoretical explanations for
phenomena that have been researched in the West, albeit without
a sound theoretical basis. They provide some new hypotheses
about means to improve one’s life and the expected outcomes
thereof and can be taken as a basis for a comprehensive theory of
meditation. Moreover, they propose a different or extended view
of reality by postulating a higher form of consciousness rarely
dealt with, so far, in Western psychology.
Such a research endeavor is not possible, however, if there
are a priori restrictions in the range of possible theoretical
assumptions, for example, about the nature of consciousness.
Although it might be hard for many Western psychologists to
even consider the possibility of something like the “absolute
reality” or the extraordinary forms of cognition discussed above,
scientific psychology could lose much if these hypotheses are not
given a good chance to be examined empirically and put to the
test. If the results eventually turn out to be inconsistent with
the hypotheses advanced by the Indian systems, having empirical
justification for this conclusion would be vastly better than just
believing a priori that the respective hypotheses are invalid. If, on
the other hand, some of the hypotheses introduced by the Indian
systems turned out to withstand rigorous scientific scrutiny this
could yield an enormous enrichment of our current psychological
theorizing.
Issues of Research Methods: Study Design
and Measurement
Research on the impact of yoga and meditation on cognition
can certainly be done using conventional study designs and
with the methodological tools already available in Western
psychology, but confining oneself to established ways and tools
would limit the range of research questions that can be examined.
For instance, to examine more specialized questions about the
effects of yoga, it might be hard to find large homogeneous
samples of participants. Rather than seeing this as a hindrance,
one could take it as a chance to have a closer look at every
individual, thus allowing for more detailed measurement and
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Cognition in Ancient Indian Approaches
AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS
Schwarz, Isabell Winkler, as well as the two reviewers and the
editor for their valuable comments on a previous version of the
paper.
All authors listed, have made substantial, direct and intellectual
contribution to the work, and approved it for publication.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL
We would like to thank Tilman Betsch, Friederike Brockhaus,
Matthijs Cornelissen, Juliane Eberth, Rao Mallampati, Ritesh
Mariadas, Maika Puta, Vivien Röder, Thomas Schäfer, Marcus
The Supplementary Material for this article can be found
online at: http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.
2016.00343
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